Does the firm use Agile and/or Lean methods on software development projects?
Very few firms that do serious work today espouse Waterfall – or as I write about in my book, “Faith Driven Development” – as a serious methodology for execution of any kind of software development project of more than trivial size. Especially in 2009, where clearly, business conditions and realities can change on a dime, writing a huge GANTT chart that specifies when, during month 14 of a project, the software developer number 22 will take a bathroom break, is more of an act of fiction writing than of serious project management. Pretending to be able to predict the future with certainty not only gets us into gigantic software development messes, writ large, but also is a chief actor in the current financial crisis (think financial services with their risk models that guaranteed AAA ratings on toxic assets). Definitely consider commitment to agile methods as a data point in your decision.
